Low Price Guarantee
We Take School POs
Bookends: Collected Intros and Outros
Contributor(s): Chabon, Michael (Author)

View larger image

ISBN: 0062851292     ISBN-13: 9780062851291
Publisher: Harper Perennial
OUR PRICE: $18.99  

Binding Type: Paperback - See All Available Formats & Editions
Published: January 2019
Qty:
Additional Information
BISAC Categories:
- Literary Collections | Essays
- Literary Criticism | Books & Reading
- Biography & Autobiography | Literary Figures
Dewey: 814.54
Physical Information: 0.4" H x 5.3" W x 7.9" L (0.30 lbs) 192 pages
Features: Price on Product
Review Citations: Publishers Weekly 10/22/2018
Library Journal Prepub Alert 08/01/2018 pg. 62
Kirkus Reviews 11/15/2018
Booklist 11/15/2018 pg. 13
 
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc.
Publisher Description:

A brilliant, idiosyncratic collection of introductions and afterwords (plus some liner notes) by New York Times bestselling and Pulitzer Prize winning author Michael Chabon--"one of contemporary literature's most gifted prose stylists" (Michiko Kakutani, New York Times).

In Bookends, Pulitzer Prize winning author Michael Chabon offers a compilation of pieces about literature--age-old classics as well as his own--that presents a unique look into his literary origins and influences, the books that shaped his taste and formed his ideas about writing and reading.

Chabon asks why anyone would write an introduction, or for that matter, read one. His own daughter Rose prefers to skip them. Chabon's answer is simple and simultaneously profound: a hope of bringing pleasure for the reader. Likewise, afterwords--they are all about shared pleasure, about the pure love of a work of art that has inspired, awakened, transformed the reader. Ultimately, this thought-provoking compendium is a series of love letters and thank-you notes, unified by the simple theme of the shared pleasure of discovery, whether it's the boyhood revelation of the most important story in Chabon's life (Ray Bradbury's The Rocket Man); a celebration of the greatest literary cartographer of the planet Mars (Edgar Rice Burroughs, with his character John Carter); a reintroduction to a forgotten master of ghost stories (M. R. James, ironically the happiest of men); the recognition that the worlds of Wes Anderson's films are reassembled scale models of our own broken reality (as is all art); Chabon's own rude awakening from the muse as he writes his debut novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh; or a playful parody of lyrical interpretation in the liner notes for Mark Ronson's Uptown Special, the true purpose of which, Chabon insists, is to spread the gospel of sensible automotive safety and maintenance practices.

Galaxies away from academic or didactic, Bookends celebrates wonder--and like the copy of The Phantom Tollbooth handed to young Michael by a friend of his father he never saw again--it is a treasured gift.


Contributor Bio(s): Chabon, Michael: -

Michael Chabon is the bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Moonglow and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, among many others. He lives in Berkeley, California with his wife, the novelist Ayelet Waldman, and their children.


 
Customer ReviewsSubmit your own review
 
To tell a friend about this book, you must Sign In First!